r little red sun," to slay her
or to listen to her, and she explains, that as she was coming home from
Vespers she heard the snow crunching behind her, glanced round, and
beheld a man running. She covered herself with her veil, but the man
seized her hands, bade her have no fear, and said that he was no robber,
but the servant of the Terrible[17] Tzar, Kiribyeevitch, from the famous
family of Maliuta, promised her her heart's desire--gold, pearls, bright
gems, flowered brocades--if she would but love him, and grant him one
embrace. Then he caressed and kissed her, so that her cheeks are still
burning, while the neighbors looked on, laughed, and pointed their
fingers at her in scorn. Tearing herself from his hands, she fled
homewards, leaving in his hands her flowered kerchief (her husband's
gift) and her Bokhara veil. She entreats her husband not to give her
over to the scorn of their neighbors, she is an orphan, her elder
brother is in a foreign land, her younger brother still a mere child.

Stepan Paramonovitch thereupon sends for his two younger brothers, but
they send back a demand to know what has happened that he should require
their presence on a dark, cold night. He informs them that
Kiribyeevitch, the lifeguardsman, has dishonored their family; that such
an insult the soul cannot brook, neither a brave man's heart endure. On
the morrow there is to be a fight with fists in the presence of the Tzar
himself, and it is his intention to go to it, and stand up against that
lifeguardsman and fight him to the death until his strength is gone. He
asks them, in case he is killed, to step forth for "Holy Mother right,"
and as they are younger than he, fresher in strength, and with fewer
sins on their heads, perchance the Lord will show mercy upon them. And
this reply his brethren spake: "Whither the breeze bloweth beneath the
sky, thither hasten the dutiful little clouds. When the dark blue eagle
summoneth with his voice to the bloody vale of slaughter, summoneth to
celebrate the feast, to clear away the dead, to him do the little
eaglets wing their flight. Thou art our elder brother, our second
father, do what thou see'st fit, and deemest best, and we will not fail
thee, our own blood and bone."

Part III. picturesquely and vividly describes the scene of the
encounter; the challenge to the combatants to stand forth, by command of
the Tzar, with a promise in the latter's name that the victors shall
receive from him rewar